Originally posted by sckmcck:Heh, the OCZ forums are up in arms about that review. The reviewers also don't seem to know about the Trim utility that OCZ has produced for the Vertex.

Yeah, the fanboys are definitely upset about this. I hope the Corsair is about equal to the Vertex (or even better, the X-25M, but I doubt it). Competition is good for us, more options and hopefully drives prices down.

TR has another new interesting article on SSD performance degradation over time. The Vertex comes out worst in these tests too.

I found their discussion on page two to be most interesting though, given the often recommended 'partition alignment' step that seems to keep cropping up on tech forums.

"One potential problem is Windows XP's default 63-sector offset...

Microsoft suggests misalignment can drop SSD performance by up to 50% when block rewrite penalties come into play...

When asked whether the X25-M takes XP's 63-sector offset into account, Intel told us that its SSD tech is alignment-agnostic...

In fact, custom partition alignment may not even be necessary with the Vertex. When asked about the issue, OCZ Vice President of Technology Development Michael Schuette also suggested that an SSD could side-step XP's 63-sector offset by employing a default 128KB offset in its firmware."

Knocks the "XP doesn't support SSDs properly" meme on the head.

Also:

"Indilinx's Barefoot controller appears to be, charitably, a work in progress—as are the drives based on it. At present, their used-state performance issues have not been addressed adequately. Indilinx may be the only party capable of rectifying the problem via firmware changes, but that doesn't absolve OCZ, Super Talent, and others selling Barefoot drives of responsibility for a glaring flaw in the products they are selling to consumers."

I continue to use my Vertex almost everyday in my Macbook. Have spent 100% of my time in Vista since replacing the X25 with the Vertex too. The only tweak I made to Vista was turning auto defrag off.

I haven't "felt" any performance decreases. But I don't benchmark my computer everyday either. All I know is that anytime I use a platter based computer, I am reminded how fast my stable of SSD based computers really are.

Originally posted by RyanS:Yeah uh, I have, and it's still not all clear-cut. Not to mention the Intel SSDs are off the planet expensive, and the cheaper ones have varying opinions on how good they are.

Too murky for me to waste a huge amount of money on.

How is it not clear cut? There are no downsides to the X25-M. It's really, really fast.

Not wanting to spend the $'s to get one says nothing about the X25-M's performance. They still destroy everything else at 4k block random writes.

Put one in as a system drive, then mount a drive via iSCSI to your NAS for mass storage and you are good.

If price is your motivation, then hold out until later in the year, as I bet prices will drop another 25%.

Originally posted by RyanS:Yeah uh, I have, and it's still not all clear-cut. Not to mention the Intel SSDs are off the planet expensive, and the cheaper ones have varying opinions on how good they are.

Too murky for me to waste a huge amount of money on.

How is it not clear cut? There are no downsides to the X25-M. It's really, really fast.

Not wanting to spend the $'s to get one says nothing about the X25-M's performance. They still destroy everything else at 4k block random writes.

Put one in as a system drive, then mount a drive via iSCSI to your NAS for mass storage and you are good.

If price is your motivation, then hold out until later in the year, as I bet prices will drop another 25%.

Why did you reply to me, when none of it had anything to do with what I said? I never said the Intel drives are slow, no idea where you got that, or asked how I could mount it on a NAS, since I don't have one, and I already said that I'm waiting for prices to drop.

I merely said the opinions on cheaper drives is still conflicting, which it is.

There's a TRIM utility from OCZ that's 100% stable on x32 windows. Works like a charm. On x64 windows, it's about 90% stable due to issues with the Intel Storage drivers. AFAIK, the util is windows only (although I think it can be run under bootcamp).Indilinx is working on a new firmware revision that will, supposedly, support Win7's Trim command.If you are runnning 32bit windows and not in a RAID (>90% of people), the OCZ Vertex is a perfectly acceptable drive. I'm running one in my 2 year old laptop. It's fucking fast, and it plus win7 makes my laptop feel more snappy than my desktop.From what I've seen in the OCZ forums, they work hard to support their customers, working with Indilinx to address issues that come up. They've also RMA'd a bunch of drives that were due to people incorrectly flashing their drives.If you're running a standard configuration (x32 windows, no raid), the Vertex is great perf/$$. Just download the TRIM util and add it into the windows task scheduler.

Went and read Anand's blurb about what he's planning on doing. It always makes me green with envy that vendors send him boxes of their latest tech.

Of note from his blurb:

quote:

I can’t help but mention Windows 7 at this point, because I *really* want to switch to it for all of my SSD testing. Windows 7 is far more reliable from a performance standpoint. Although our recent article showed that it’s not really any faster than Vista, my SSD testing has shown that it’s at least more consistent with its performance results. Part of this I attribute to Windows 7 doing more intelligent grouping of its background tasks than Vista ever did, although it is surprising to me that we’re not seeing noticeably better battery life as a result.

How much would you guys hate me if I switched to Windows 7 sooner rather than later?

Everything else I've read agrees that Windows 7 is the easiest way to leverage an SSD.

Flash firmware in Vertex. (so I can test trim support). If my data is still there, then I will try trim tool on my Vista 64 partition. If it works, bravo. If not, who cares.

Then get OSX and then Win7 64 RC1 installed and try trim tool.

Its my work computer, so rebuilding windows is kind of a drag, but I need to spend more time on Win7 on a box I use often, so I figure now is the time. I don't think I will do Win7 on my desktop (raid0-x25) till its RTM. (even more of a drag to rebuild)

Originally posted by tonyXcom:Which leads me to tonights plan of attack.

Flash firmware in Vertex. (so I can test trim support). If my data is still there, then I will try trim tool on my Vista 64 partition. If it works, bravo. If not, who cares.

Then get OSX and then Win7 64 RC1 installed and try trim tool.

Its my work computer, so rebuilding windows is kind of a drag, but I need to spend more time on Win7 on a box I use often, so I figure now is the time. I don't think I will do Win7 on my desktop (raid0-x25) till its RTM. (even more of a drag to rebuild)

Your data will NOT be there!!!The Vertex firmware flash WILL ERASE data!

Double check your firmware version. If it's a newer drive, you may not have to flash at all.

Trim support is provided via a command line utility at the moment.There is a firmware in the works (yet to be released) that is supposed to support the Win7 TRIM command.

I have flashed the Vertex 2 times before so I know the deal about the data. I should be at 1275 now. But I was reading one of the Trim threads on OCZ and a few people said the firmware update didn't erase the drive.

The straw that broke the camel's back (after having to put up with crashes and data loss resulting from well-publicized bugs in firmwares 1199, 1275 and 1.10) is the fact that the updater for firmware 1.30 (1571, whatever) will not run on my computer. Apparently you need IDE mode and not AHCI to apply the update, and Sony didn't think I'd need a switch for that in my laptop's bios.

The next time I'm taking my laptop apart it won't be to flash this cursed drive... it'll be to replace it with something else. I just don't want to go smaller or slower. Does anyone know of a non-Indilinx 2.5" drive that is currently available and is at least 250 gigs? The Samsung-based drives look good (Corsair, etc) but seem to be unavailable.

You know that the wiper thingy only wipes free space it finds on the NTFS partition, right? The OSX partition will not benefit from wiper at all. The drive will consider all the OSX space to be full, no matter how much you trim the windows side.

Originally posted by Black Jacque:How long does it take for the TRIM utility to complete?

Post a *rate* (MB/, GB/s, TB/fortnight, etc.).

Anywhere between 10 seconds to four hours to wipe a drive, depending on how much data's on there. To me it looks like it's sending sectors in batches... if your drive is empty it goes very fast, if it has to scavenge sector after sector it's excruciatingly slow.

I'm not, I'd like to buy a SSD to pep up my laptop and eventually desktop, and the amount of conflicting information out there is unbelievable.

Too expensive to take a punt on it, so stuff it, SSD can wait.

Dude, read the thread. Follow the links. Either the Intel or the Samsung-based SSDs are OK.

Yeah uh, I have, and it's still not all clear-cut. Not to mention the Intel SSDs are off the planet expensive, and the cheaper ones have varying opinions on how good they are.

Too murky for me to waste a huge amount of money on.

Check out the OCZ forums. If you're running a 32bit windows on your laptop, you shouldn't have any problems with the vertex. Just get the TRIM utility.

Is there a limit on how many quotes you can nest?

I hate to be the anti-fanboi but stay away from Indilinx drives at all costs. Maybe firmware 1571/1.30 will fix problems like this but I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that they still don't know how to do even rudimentary QA. Firmware quality has gotten markedly better (I only have to restore my laptop from backup once a week now) but do you want to risk $700 (or whatever they charge for a 250GB beta program these days) and all your data?

On the other hand, my desktop is very happily humming along on an array of four X25-M drives. And looking at $/GB, they're not much worse than the fruits of Indilinx' preterm labor. The price is definitely attractive in comparison, especially if you factor in the fact that they work like a drive should: you plug it in, you put data on it, and you read it back when you feel like it.

Originally posted by jarablue:Has anyone read the GSkill ssd review done by Guru3d? It seems that, that drive is leading the pack. Have any of you guys purchased one? I am leaning toward getting that drive..

?

The GSkill Falcon uses the same controller as the OCZ Vertex, so I would think they should perform roughly the same, although new firmware can always change things.

Originally posted by jarablue:Has anyone read the GSkill ssd review done by Guru3d? It seems that, that drive is leading the pack. Have any of you guys purchased one? I am leaning toward getting that drive..

?

Going back through this thread, the 'safe' choices in order of performance and availablity based on drive controller appear to be:

Not to channel Cato, but Indilinx is far from safe. Give them at least 6 more months of firmware release frenzy and see if things settle down. Until then, only buy their stuff if you're not planning on keeping anything valuable on the drive.

And you have a desktop with 4 X25s and you can't work out a computer with ide mode?

Gotcha re. OSX.

I can most certainly manage a firmware update: I'd just have to move the drive to my desktop and hook it up to the mobo SATA port.

I just refuse to put up with this BS anymore. Taking the Vaio Z apart and getting the harddrive out is no fun. It was interesting the first time around, mildly annoying the second time, I loathed if the third time onwards. I'm prepared to do it once more: to swap in the 256GB Samsung-based Corsair I managed to source through an obscure reseller on Amazon.

To entertain you with my OCZ saga:

I bought the Vertex and it came with FW 1199. This caused the drive to shit the bed when confronted with heavy write activity. Nothing major, mind you: All it took was copying a few large files to it.

Having no other choice at the time, I had to downgrade the drive to FW 0112. This required to get the drive out, put it back with a jumper on it, then put it back jumperless after the FW has been upgraded.

Of course FW 0112 was not quite reliable either, and the drive was upgraded to 1275 when that came around. Then it was upgraded to 1.10 - which was actually a pleasant process because the prior 1275 flash made it possible to do the upgrade from a Windows program without jumpering the drive. No need to take the lappy apart!

Now 1.30 is here, I'm hoping it'd fix the freezes and data corruption I'm still experiencing - of course there's no way to tell for good because manufacturers decided to scrub the changelog, but "internal bugfixes" sound good, right? 1.30 could be loaded onto the drive jumperless, but for whatever reason the windows-based updater is no more, it's a goofy DOS program that refuses to work reliably in AHCI mode. Mac users did luck out (Macbooks are using AHCI and there's no way to set IDE mode there either) but on my Vaio the utility just won't work. This has been reported by a few other users as well, and there's no other solution other than "change to IDE mode from AHCI" - which, courtesy of Sony, is impossible.

I'm going to have to get the screwdriver out once more... So I had a choice: spend another $700 or so on a drive that's not plagued with problems, or upgrade the Vertex and hope that all issues will be magically solved this time around: no more data loss, no more laptop disassembly two weeks from now. It's somewhat of a no-brainer.

Originally posted by tonyXcom:I got my Vertex the week they were available on Newegg. I haven't had any problems with any versions of the firmware.

I use this laptop at least 3 days a week.

Good for you. I use the laptop 7 days a week, I have two 50GB VMs on it, I run two instances of Outlook with close to 10 gigs of indexed data, I do large Visual Studio compiles taking 30 minutes. It's understandable that I'm more likely to run into problems than the average light user. It's probably also understandable that I cannot tolerate the least amount of unreliability from something that's supposed to be a drop-in replacement for a 2.5" drive.

Yes it's certainly a bummer. Especially with the frequency of the firmware updates. But I wouldn't consider that a problem unless they told me that updating the firmware would not hurt my data. But that isn't the case here.